Hey, I live in an apartment in Brooklyn with 5 people. Our gas bill this month was $700 dollars, which seems totally absurd!
It's been high the last few months (but more like $400) so we've been turning down the heat as much as we can. Fortunately it's been warm in NY lately, because we've kept the thermostats at ~60, maybe up to 65 on a chilly day. For reference, in the summer, our bill is more like
Basically, we just have no clue where all this gas is going, so I'm looking for suggestions on:
- What else we should check or turn off
- If this is still totally mysterious, what are our options? Who do we talk to? What if there's some sort of leak or mis-configuration that we're being charged for? How do we get Con-Ed to take us seriously?
First of all, it is a large apartment, and has no neighboring buildings on our floor, so we realize that it's going to be a moderately expensive apartment to heat no matter what. It's just so bewildering to us that it goes up when we turn the heat down.
Things we know of that use gas: heat of course, water heater, stove, oven, maybe the dryer?
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As mentioned, we're trying to address heat. It's set to ~60, so it's not even running most of the time. We're also trying turning it totally off (i.e. the lightswitch) whenever we can.
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Water heater: we have 5 people showering, so probably almost 30 showers/week. Also, a dishwasher. Does the washing machine use heated water? However, this seems like it would be pretty constant year-round, so it doesn't make sense that it's jumped so much.
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We cook a fair amount, so the stove is on a lot but that's year round, and in the summer our gas bill is <$100.
Any other ideas? what should we be looking into?
March 01, 2017 at 08:44AM
